Lifesaving Pet First Aid Tips with Master Instructor Arden Moore

🚨 Are you prepared to save your pet in an emergency? Join us for this episode of Muddy Paws and Hairballs with Arden Moore, a master-certified pet first aid and CPR instructor, award-winning author, and the host of two popular pet podcasts, Oh Behave on Pet Life Radio and Four-Legged Life. Arden brings her wealth of knowledge to share essential tips every pet parent needs to know. Learn how to handle pet emergencies and protect your furry family members.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

🐶 How to Recognize Pet Emergencies: Choking, heatstroke, injuries, and more.

🐾 Essential Pet First Aid Techniques: Arden’s step-by-step advice for handling crises.

🛒 Building the Ultimate Pet First Aid Kit: Must-have tools for any pet parent.

🐱 Preventative Safety Tips: Simple ways to make your home safer for pets.

🐕 Understanding Pet Behavior: What to watch for during stressful situations.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

🐾 Pet First Aid for You – Arden Moore’s pet first aid classes, certifications, and kits.

📞 ASPCA Poison Control – 24/7 hotline for pet poisoning emergencies.

📞 Pet Poison Helpline – Expert assistance with poisoning cases.

🛒 Shop Pet First Aid Kits – Get Arden’s recommended first aid kits.

🎧 Arden’s Podcasts: 

Oh Behave: Listen on Pet Life Radio

Four-Legged Life: Visit Website

Quick Update: We’re taking a short break and will be back with a batch of fresh episodes starting August 10! 
In the meantime, binge your way through 100+ past episodes packed with pet-saving sanity—and maybe even solve that one issue that's driving you (and your pet) nuts. 
Catch up, take notes, and we’ll see you soon! 

Chapters

• 0:31 Lifesaving Pet First Aid Training
• 8:44 Pet First Aid Training Techniques
• 16:28 Improvising Pet First Aid Techniques
• 31:05 Preventing Pet Emergencies and Training

Transcript

Amy Castro: 0:31

This week on Muddy Paws and Hairballs, I'm joined by the one and only Arden Moore, a pet safety guru and pet expert, who somehow makes first aid with your pets sound like the most fun you've had. All week We'll be talking pet first aid, behavior quirks and the stuff no one tells you about keeping your pets safe and happy Trust me you're not going to want to miss this one.

Amy Castro: 0:52

miss this one. Welcome to Muddy Paws and Hairballs, the podcast where we dig into the messy, heartwarming and sometimes life-saving aspects of pet parenting. I'm Amy Castro, and today we're joined by someone who is a true lifesaver for pets, Arden Moore. Arden wears a lot of hats and we're going to get into that in a minute, but she is also the founder of Pet First Aid for you, a master-certified pet first aid and CPR instructor, and the host of not one, but two super successful podcasts Obehave, which I was so honored to have you on the show, because that is literally the oldest pet podcast there is. It's been around for a long time and super successful. And then her second podcast, Four-Legged Life. She has helped countless pet parents and professionals through her training, many, many books and hands-on classes. So, Arden, with all those hats and all the things you've got going on, thank you for taking the time to be here on our little old show.

Arden Moore: 1:55

Hey, pause up, Amy. It's an honor to be on your show and I think we both love what we do. We're getting to bring out the best in pets and their people.

Amy Castro: 2:04

Yes, that's what it's all about Living your best life and keeping everybody together in my book. So before we launch into the first aid part of things, I want to kind of start with you, because you have built what I believe you're kind of like my inspiration to building this career around pets, pet parenting and saving pet lives.

Arden Moore: 2:25

So how did you get here? What's the path? Well, let's start in diapers. No, I'm just kidding, I've always been. I was a journal. I still am a journalist for something called newspapers, daily newspapers for 20 years, major dailies.

Arden Moore: 2:35

I remember those, and I covered everything from Super Bowls and space shuttles to serial killers. I've always had pets in my life growing up. First dog was a fat beagle named Crackers and I had a cat that would swim named Corky. I didn't know that cats shouldn't swim. Corky liked to swim. I didn't know that cats shouldn't swim. Of course they like to swim.

Arden Moore: 3:11

And then fast forward after 20 years in newspapers, I went to the publishing world and worked at Rodale Press, which is like men's health prevention magazine, and I got in the book division and they started of pets and my love of writing and communicating. And then for the last God, I'm really old. For the last 20 some years I have been without the W-2 safety net and I have written over 27 dog and cat books the two shows I love health, I love talking to really good, vetted out sources and I realized, amy, there was a piece of the puzzle missing and that was how do we keep our pets safe? So I got into the field of pet first aid and that was back in 2011. And now I'm a master instructor, but I'm always a student, always a teacher. I work with a team of stellar veterinary advisors.

Arden Moore: 3:55

I have a pet safety dog Kona and pet safety cat Casey, and together we're trying to save lives, one paw at a time, and we're always improving our program. And I don't know if for the people that are going to tune into your shorts Kona, come here, come here, kona, come on. Kona is a terrier mix, so cute. She's a shelter alum. I don't call them rescues. She's a shelter alum from the Rancho Coastal Humane Society. She's also a certified therapy dog and she is the most intuitive dog I've ever met. She knows how to bring up energy, bring down energy, meeting a dog, a cat, a person, and she's my best friend. Now this is more difficult, right, amy? I have a cat named Pet Safety Cat Casey, who's willing to be a safety cat. He purrs like a Mack truck. He is a shelter alum from the San Diego Humane Society. We call him a feline George Clooney because he charms everyone.

Amy Castro: 5:04

He's very handsome as well.

Arden Moore: 5:05

He's also a therapy cat and he has been to 16 states by car and by plane to help me teach behavior and first aid and I call him my BFF best feline friend. So there you go. You met the team.

Amy Castro: 5:21

That's a great team. That's a great team. I need a team like that. Mine are all a little bit nuts, but I don't know. There might be some potential.

Amy Castro: 5:29

I need to weed through the seven that I've got floating around the house right now and see if there's somebody who could be a co-host on the show or something like that. So you know, pet first aid, I think, is something that pet parents don't think about. You know, they think I've got a veterinarian or I know where the emergency vet is, and I also think that people don't realize the many, many, and then maybe it's just being in rescue and, having had so many, I may have had over 4,000 fosters come through my house, and that's when I stopped counting. So I don't even know since then. That was a couple of years ago. That's impressive. Thank you for doing that. Oh hey, it's a labor of love for sure, but the many things that they can get into, that can actually end quite tragically. So why is it that pet parents really need to investigate and get smart about pet first aid?

Arden Moore: 6:16

Well, because we love them, we want to save some money in our wallet and we'd like to have them grow old with us. I mean, there you go, check, check, check. I tell people what is pet first aid. It's that life-saving bridge between the uh-oh and the veterinary clinic. Our role is to render aid on the scene, stabilize them and safely get them to the vet. I can't make you a veterinarian, amy, in one hour, right, but in a pet emergency, as you know, fostering all the pets that you have, every minute counts, every minute counts. So they did a poll, a national poll, and I was surprised about 2% of the American population that have pets only 2% have taken Pet First Aid. So I'm on a mission to bump up those percentages because if you can be there and know what to do when your pet is choking or if your pet collapses, and know how to do CPR and then hand over that pet to the veterinary team, you just may save your pet's life.

Amy Castro: 7:25

Yeah so, so true. So you know you mentioned choking. What are? Because, like I mentioned, I think a lot of people don't realize the many things that can happen. What are some of the most common pet emergencies that you think people are unprepared for and where pet first aid training would be life-saving for their pet?

Arden Moore: 7:42

Well, choking is a big one because there's different types of choking. Your dog could grab the chicken leg off your plate and run, crush it and get the broken bones stuck in their throat. Or swipe your avocado pit and it's a gooey and slippery and it seals right against the airway, against the throat. How you gonna get that that out? Or the kitty cat. I hate the pictures of kittens next to a big ball of yarn. The subtitle to me is kill, kill, kill the Kitty. Because with their barbed tongue they can't resist something that's moving like a snake. They swallow the yarn. It gets stuck in their throat. So it happens like this, amy, that's just choking. But they can get too hot, they can get too cold, they could slip and fall and break a leg, they could get in a fight and have wounds, puncture wounds, and they could have their heart stopped. So we cover a lot of it.

Arden Moore: 8:44

But I think what makes my class a little different? First of all, my, my podcast is called oh behave. So strap yourselves in when you're gonna take a pet first class with me, because I have found you shouldn't scare people. Scaring people does not open the brain to learn, but if you give them good little jingles rhymes. You make it fun and interactive. Then guess what? When the pet emergency happens, what I've taught you kicks in. That's my mission is to make it so that you leave the class going. I know what to do.

Amy Castro: 9:22

Well, it's interesting. You know, I am one of those people that I don't know if it's just how I was raised, because my mom was a nurse and you know her philosophy was, if you weren't bleeding from your eyeballs and you didn't have 103 fever, you were going to school. So like nothing, really nothing really phased her, you know blood bones, broken bones, things like that, and so that's how I grew up. So I don't panic in crisis situations.

Arden Moore: 9:45

I might flip out afterwards from what I've been through, but I think most people panic and then they become frozen, that's a really good point, because in my class I'm not oprah, so you're not going to get a free car, but I got something better to give you that oprah doesn't, and that is this I give everybody in my class at the start of class permission to freak out later and it really resonates because pets, as my cat casey would say, here comes the bad pun. You have to be in the me now to save me. You have to be in the present moment.

Arden Moore: 10:23

You can't panic about what happened unless you're a time traveler and you can reverse the past and you can't have a lot of control of the future, but if you stay in that lane called the present, you really can help your pet and then, when the pet is in the hands of the vet team, freak out, go cry in the shower, run up the street, have a shot of fireball, whatever. But if you know that they need you and you can breathe. And that's the other thing I learned and I work with a lot of EMTs, paramedics, other first responders they teach me, I teach them, and we get everybody to act like a first responder, a pet detective, and you're going to love this, amy we teach everybody in our class to be a poopologist. Yes, please, because what comes out of the mouth and if you're not paying attention could be a medical emergency. Yeah, so we teach you how to control your breathing, how to gather what you see, hear, smell, safely feel, how to freak out later.

Arden Moore: 11:27

And we don't have people putting their nose in a course book during the class. It is interactive. You get the course book but nobody's going to page 13 reading paragraph four, because if you get to learn in the present moment and other people are talking with you and you're saying the things and not just hearing me going at saying that to you, you actually learn, and that's my biggest mission. I want you to know what to do and just do it. That's kind of. I've been on this mission since 2011. That's amazing.

Amy Castro: 11:59

So can you give us an example of one of your acronyms or memory devices? I mean, I don't want you to give away the class, because I want people to actually take it but just as an example.

Arden Moore: 12:09

Well, one of the biggest things that people think they should do when a dog or cat is overheated is to give them ice. And when a dog or cat is going on the bridge of heat stroke, the worst thing you could do is give them the polar opposite to their body, which is ice. Instead, they sweat differently than we do. They sweat through their paws and by panting. They don't have skin pores all over their body. You know, you and I are in Texas right now, and it seems like I moved to Texas and all of a sudden, every pore of my body sweats Like what is going on in this state.

Arden Moore: 12:46

Yeah, right, when you get out of the shower you can't even dry off because you start sweating already. I hate it. So we teach people that you dip their paws in cool water, you get them in the air conditioning, you don't use ice, you don't put ice cubes in the water bowl because and here's how you're going to remember it All right, this is dorky, but this is me because ice, ice, not nice baby. And you say baby, and then everybody in class says ice, ice, not nice baby. And what do you think that does, amy, to them, remembering when their kid is overheated.

Amy Castro: 13:21

It's going to pop right into their heads just like any other song, lyric jingle, whatever it might be slogan that you remember from 1973?.

Arden Moore: 13:29

The other one we do when we do pet first aid and there's new guidelines now for pet first aid when a dog or cat is unconscious and you're going to do first aid, you always position yourself your belly to their back because you don't want to get bit. But people are like do I turn them on one side or the other? I don't know Well. Well, the heart's in the middle, it's okay, all right, for your safety, though you always purposely do. The hand that pumps is always closest to the rump. So the hand that pumps is closest to the rump because your other hand can go back and slide across the neck and the face. If the dog suddenly wakes up, you have an ability to put your hand down to keep that face from attacking you. And I say to be a member of the Van Gogh family. You don't want to be a member of the Van Gogh family. You don't want to lose that ear.

Arden Moore: 14:20

So the hand that does the pump is closest to the rump and the palm is the pump. That's an art and original that now some veterinary schools, according to some of my vet advisors, are now using my rhyme. You're just not going to forget it.

Amy Castro: 14:34

The hand that pumps is closest to the rump.

Arden Moore: 14:35

Who wants to be in a class where people are using oh, my cat just hacked up a tribosaur. I know a fancy word for hairball. I don't use big words. I say butt, I say rump, because I want it to be practical and and and. Everything is approved by the team of veterinary advisors with their big Vanna White initials after their names. But I'm here to teach you how to save a life and you teach by having them get to do and having rhymes and easy phrases and and make it common sense. And so that's what I, what I build my first day class around.

Amy Castro: 15:10

Yeah, well, and I'm glad that you're focusing on the safety, because that was going to be one of my questions to you. You know, is or or just a discussion about the fact that I remember seeing this horrific video, and it was an after story about a woman who was hospitalized and I don't know if she lost part of her arm or she was at risk of losing her arm because her cat had been in a horrific. I won't tell the gory story, but the cat was horrifically injured and she was trying to help the cat but the cat was shredding her and biting her in the process and it's like at what point do you say am I going to lose my arm for this? Like? So just the fact that you're rolling in things to keep yourself safe because you got to do that too, you can't take care of your pet if you end up in the hospital.

Arden Moore: 15:53

Oh no, we. I'm one of the fear-free certified speakers. Dr Marty Becker has started this program and it's all about FAS reducing fear, anxiety and stress. So we get into how we approach an injured dog or cat, what we say, what we never say, and we have some practical all right, here comes the pun Mutt-Gyver hacks tips. If you don't have a pet first aid kit and the vet is far away, what can you do to render aid on the scene to an injured dog or cat and still keep all your fingers and everything? So we use towels, we use sweatshirts, we use six-foot leashes, we even take an Ikea bag you know those blue shopping bags. Yeah, we cut it lengthwise, we leave the handles and if you have a large dog, you just got yourself a $2 gurney.

Arden Moore: 16:49

And it rolls up and I keep it in the car. There's been times I've seen dogs get hit by cars and I've had to use it. But I'm a daughter of an engineer, so if you roll the dog in a towel or a blanket and you have to drag it across carpet or a rug, it's really hard. But if you put them wrapped in a slick plastic, slick Ikea bag or something similar, it doesn't rip and it has no friction, so it glides. Plus, you have handles. So we show things like that in our class.

Amy Castro: 17:18

That's amazing, that's yeah, that's, that's so awesome. Just be able to improvise with what you've got, because we always have stuff in our car. As a matter of fact, I always say to my daughter if we ever get pulled over by the police, we're probably going to jail because I mean, we've got syringes, we've got. You know, sometimes it's just leftover stuff, but you know, it's amazing the things that you have around you, if you have the wherewithal and the knowledge of how to put them into play, how you can make those work to your advantage.

Arden Moore: 17:46

I mean, you draw strings on a hoodie is a great makeshift muzzle.

Amy Castro: 17:50

Yeah, absolutely, or a leash, you know something like that for sure.

Arden Moore: 17:56

Yeah, we show a lot of MacGyverisms because I want you to leave that class going. I got this, and the other thing is I learned from veterinarians.

Arden Moore: 18:03

I give up a night every few months and spend it in the ER and I'm always learning more things because I want to share it and this is something that veterinarians have told me that I want to pass on to all of you listening who love your pets, and for those in the foster and the rescue world. You've got to be practical and don't beat yourself up. That's easy to say, but they taught me to tell you you have to do the best you can in the circumstances. You're in with the skills you have, right. So you take a pet first aid class. I tell everybody you just walked in the store. When you walk out of the store and get your two-year certificate, you're going to have more knowledge, you're going to have more skills, you're going to have a better chance of saving that pet's life. But even veterinarians can't save every pet. But I want to empower you and tell you this is going to be a game changer of a class for you and that's how we approach it.

Amy Castro: 19:02

Well, and I think, from the standpoint of peace of mind for the pet owner, from the standpoint of peace of mind for the pet owner rescuer, foster, whatever it might be I know for myself I don't feel the anxiety and guilt when an animal passes that somebody else might, and part of that I'm sure I can attribute to the fact that I've seen a tremendous amount of animal suffering and death.

Amy Castro: 19:22

At the same time, I feel like I'm well equipped and by the time it gets to the vet and something in, let's say, the poor animal passes away, I know I've done everything that is humanly possible for Amy Castro to do. So I'm not going to beat myself up over it, but it's because I have acquired the equipment, or the mudgyvering it, and the knowledge and the information, so that I've got as many tools as possible to help in as many situations as I can. So I feel like I'm, you know I've done my best along those lines. But I think where people get into trouble is when they, when they realize it's something that maybe they could have easily prevented or easily, you know, administered some type of aid that could have made a huge difference, and they didn't do it, didn't know how. And that's where you start knocking yourself over the head.

Arden Moore: 20:08

Well, yeah, and you bring up a good point. I mean, I'm one person, even though my last name is Moore, but I also team up with a company called Pro Pet Hero, in addition to my Pet First Aid for you class, and my job is to teach people to become Pet First Aid instructors. It's a 16-hour course, two days, eight hours, and you're like what, but it goes like that. And we keep the class enrollment to a small handful, five or six max every month, and we've been doing that since 18. And I have now trained over 400 people to be pet first aid instructors, and they're in daycares, they're in rescues, they're pet sitters, they're vet assistants. So Arden's Army's out there, and that's my.

Arden Moore: 20:53

If I had to have a legacy, my legacy was she's the chick that made it so that more people took pet first aid. Yeah, I know, it's not a big thing, I didn't win the lottery, but if I get to go to heaven knowing that's my legacy, I'm happy. Yeah, amen to that for sure. And you must have feline energy, because my cat, casey, is purring into the microphone and he is like flirting with you on the table. So there you go.

Amy Castro: 21:22

I'm definitely a cat whisperer, for sure, because the vast majority of the animals that come through our rescue, purely because of logistics over the years, have been cats. I mean, we get the occasional dog, maybe 15 or so a year and some years more, but for the most part it's dozens and dozens of cats. So yeah, we definitely, and you learn a lot. You learn a lot about the mischief that those animals can get into and the signs and symptoms the poop don't. You wouldn't believe how many pictures of cat poop I have on my phone. What do you think about this? What do you think? Or my fosters will send me a picture. You're being a poopologist, I am a poopologist In my class.

Arden Moore: 22:04

I actually tell people I saved Casey's life when he, about four or five years ago he went into the litter box and he just sat and I'm like, dude, you're reading a novel, what's going on? And all of a sudden you guys know this sound and I went and he's a big, long orange tabby and there was a little bit of urine and it had red in it blood. So of course it was a sunday night. You all can relate right emergencies only happen on holidays.

Arden Moore: 22:35

Right before your vacation, you know where you can pay more money at the er. But he's my man, he's a certified therapy cat and he's my best feline friend. I took him him that night to the vet ER and they manipulated his bladder and he released a river of urine on that table.

Amy Castro: 22:55

He had a blockage.

Arden Moore: 22:56

Yep. And the thing was this they said we're going to keep Casey overnight, we're going to check him out, make sure. And I remember what the veterinarian said in the morning when I picked up Casey with a clean bill of health. She said had you waited, arden, until Monday to try to work him into your regular vet, there's a very good chance he would have died of a urinary blockage, urinary toxicity, yep. So she said it's always, always better to be a little too soon than a little too late. I think it's better to be a little bit more proactive than wait till it gets worse. And so, in this case, I tell people that boy cats, boy dogs, they're urethra. I call it the pee-pee pipeline it is. It's like a road rally race, more so than females, so there's more curves that stones and crystals can come in and block the flow. So if your cat isn't going, that's a medical emergency, same for our dogs.

Amy Castro: 24:02

And so, had I waited until Monday, I may not have Casey right here next to me yeah, that can happen so fast and well, because most of the time, by the time somebody discovers that the cat's having an issue, it didn't just start with that urination. It's something that has been building up or going on for a little bit, and we may not want to tell us, because they're both prey and predator.

Arden Moore: 24:23

They're like I feel great. Sure, my leg is dangling, but I'm good. The dog will be like you know, I think I stubbed my toe, yeah.

Amy Castro: 24:34

Yeah, that's yeah and that's a lot of people don't realize that. About cats how long they hide, you know, it's like they're fine until they're definitely not, and there's not often an obvious progression for people to see Along those lines, because that was another thing I wanted to ask you about. It's like, because we even struggle with this in rescue Should we take him to the vet? Should we not take him to a vet? You know, and obviously we know, there are certain things where you can't wait. But how does the average pet parent know? Are there any guidelines that would say?

Arden Moore: 25:02

Well, my veterinarians tell me to say this. There's the four biggies. Okay, All right, they don't have a heartbeat, they're not breathing, they're spurting blood, an arterial bleed, and for our doggies, they are suffering from bloat and that's the twisted stomach that happens to deep-chested dogs and that is life-threatening. Those are the four biggies. You need to render aid and you know what Our phones have speakers. Put your phone on speaker while you're calling the nearest vet and give them the stats quick while you're still rendering aid. And we even have a little game we play in our class. But please, guys, I understand my dog Kona, my cat Casey and the rest of the pets in my household. They're my family and I'm going to do whatever I can to save their life. But if you freak out on the phone and start screaming, every minute counts.

Arden Moore: 26:04

So, we actually teach you how to report an emergency in our classes, because when are we going to freak out Amy, Later, after. So those are the four biggie and I've done CPR four times. I've actually saved two, but I've had pets choke and pass out and I've revived them. So again, being in the present moment, gathering clues. If they hack up the world's most obnoxious hairball before passing out, put it in a poop bag or a baggie and bring in the evidence. Veterinarians want the clues. You're a pet detective in the making, so I don't know if that helps or not.

Amy Castro: 26:44

No, that's definitely. I mean, that definitely is a good starting point for sure. I want to jump back to the Pet First Aid Kit, because obviously we're getting the foreknowledge here and not in the crisis where we're looking around to Mutt-Gyver things. Can I go on Amazon or someplace and get a good Pet First Aid Kit, or is it something that I truly need, Like I know ours around here is pretty sophisticated?

Arden Moore: 27:05

It's not you know it's not your average kit. I work with a company called All Cat Adventures and I have the kit available on my Pet First Aid for you website. It should be something that's waterproof. It should be something that's good for cats, dogs and, ideally, people. And every six months go through that bag and see what is something that could have expired that I need to replace.

Arden Moore: 27:32

And I always say do it when you change your clocks, rather than January 1st and July 1st of July, because you're hungover, maybe from the new year and 4th of July you're crazy, going on a trip, so do it when it's boring, do it the same time. Your carbon monoxide monitors and your smoke detectors. When you look at what's in a kit, my kits actually have a cheat sheet that I created, so you're like I don't know what to do, and there it is, I slip it in there. But there is hydrogen peroxide in that kit and this I hope I can share with your, your followers. Amy, we do the hydrogen peroxide pledge, so I'm going to ask you if you could do this with me. You ready?

Amy Castro: 28:14

I won't embarrass you. Raise my right hand.

Arden Moore: 28:16

Yeah, raise your right paw, my right paw, sorry. Okay, repeat after me. I promise I Never to use hydrogen peroxide.

Amy Castro: 28:25

Never to use hydrogen peroxide To clean a pet's wound. To clean a pet's wound.

Arden Moore: 28:31

So help me paw, so help me paw. The only safe use for hydrogen peroxide on a pet is if you know they got into a toxin. You're far away from a veterinary office and they're not puking. You insert it in their mouth to make them vomit. But if you try to clean a wound with hydrogen peroxide, you see the bubbling and you think, oh, that's good. No, you are destroying healthy skin around the wound, making the wound bigger and process more of a mess. Really, keep in mind this on your body, on your cat's body, on your dog's body, the largest organ is the skin, so you muck up the skin. The body's immune system is like mayday, mayday, mayday coming over there and all the other systems get compromised. Day, may, day coming over there and all the other systems get compromised. So that's why we have everybody do water. Clean a wound with water really hard, really hard.

Arden Moore: 29:30

Just clean the wound, yeah, so thank you for taking the hydrogen peroxide pot pledge.

Amy Castro: 29:36

Yes, I have pledged. I used to have to keep an industrial size bottle of peroxide underneath my kitchen sink for my Doberman who had let's just say he had dietary indiscretion. If we could, if we could catch the fact that he'd swallowed a sock hole pretty quickly, we could literally get him to. So I'll tell a quick story about that, because you'll appreciate this. So we got to the point where we could you know, we, where we knew how he operated. And I was doing laundry and noticed that two men's knee-high white heavy-duty socks two, not just one, but two were missing. And the dog was there, looking very guilty. So I get the peroxide out, I give him the dose that my vet had trained me to give and, lo and behold, up come the socks. So I took the socks outside and I hung them on the edge of a table to take a picture to show her, because she used to be like, no, don't tell me, don't tell me. And I went back inside for something and the dog ate them again. So I had to dose him again.

Amy Castro: 30:36

Now see, a cat would never do that, I know, yeah. So from there on out, the dog had to. When he was unattended especially if you put him outside, because most of the stuff he got into was outside he had to wear a wire basket muzzle to keep him from killing himself.

Arden Moore: 30:49

He was suicidal. Yeah, and dogs explore more with their mouths and cats explore more with their paws. You know, I'm glad your dog survived, Wow, yeah yeah, he was a menace.

Amy Castro: 31:18

He was a menace, all right. So one of the things that I thought I had remembered reading on the many things that are that you have available out there all the information, is preventing emergencies. Do you have any advice, as we get kind of towards the end of our time here, for how people can prevent emergencies? And then I want to get into how people can take your course.

Arden Moore: 31:39

Well, I think it's a good habit, once a week, once a month, to do a room-by-room inspection of your home from the pet's perspective. So if you're six foot tall, get down low and look around.

Arden Moore: 31:52

My sister. I was at her house and for some reason there was one of those little plastic squares of dental floss that was left on the end table by the recliner and her curious dog, maddie, got into it, crushed it and her mouth was full of dental floss. As I heard her choking ran to around the my sister has many recliners ran down the hallway around the recliners as she passed out with a mouthful of dental floss oh wow. Fortunately the metal clip was right here at the throat, hadn't gone down and I. It took me two, one minutes of rescue breathing and I revived her.

Arden Moore: 32:35

So doing that room by room check. We're coming out of the holidays, but anything that has your scent on it, you know it's an attraction to a pet that's bonded with you. So, linear objects, sharp objects. If you like to cook and bake, do not leave that dough rising on the counter, because even chihuahuas will figure out how to get that dough. If there's a will, there's a way, and that could cause blockage in the stomach. So you know, hot pans of water, pasta. Keep your pets out of the kitchen when you're making food. Have them in another area with a keep-busy toy or something. But just think about like you're a pet safety, parent Safety, safety safety. I don't know if that answers your question.

Amy Castro: 33:25

No, I mean, it definitely does, and I think you know just the awareness. I just saw a video the other day talking about minoxidil and how toxic it was to pets Rogaine and so if you've got somebody in your house that's trying to maintain their hair and they use Rogaine, even the tiniest amount that they have on their hands can cause toxicity to, and lethal toxicity to, pets.

Arden Moore: 33:46

So just knowing you know, doing your homework on certain items in your home too, and knowing what's not safe and what is safe and have on your phone or on your refrigerator, like the poison control hotline, the ASPCA poison control hotline. There's also another pet poison hotline. There's two of them, but they're 800 numbers. They're staffed 24-7 by board-certified veterinary toxicologists and you can do like a video call and gather the evidence. And yes, you do have to pay for it. That's how they make their living. But I would say, have that handy so that anybody in the house. And another preventative is if your pet has any allergies like to bee venom and they can close their throat if they get stung, instead of just pills of antihistamines, make them gels with a safety pin on the box and the dose written in marker so that if your pet's throat is closing you can use that safety pin, puncture the gel, drip it into the mouth and keep that airway open en route to the vet yeah, that's, that's good to know.

Amy Castro: 34:58

yeah, because allergies, that's a a whole other potential hazard there, for sure.

Arden Moore: 35:01

Yeah, I'll tell you what learning pet first aid. It's great to take your dog on a doggy vacay, give him a cool toy, whatever, but if you really want to show how much you love your pet, you need to take a class. And if you take a class with people like me, you're going to have fun and you're going to learn and you're going to bond with your pet.

Amy Castro: 35:22

Yeah, definitely. So, on that note, obviously you're in the Dallas area, so you do in-person classes up there, correct? Well, I've traveled through the country, yeah.

Arden Moore: 35:33

I've traveled through the country, depending on the situation, like I went up to Kansas City because I taught for four or five days. There was a whole group of people and it was worth doing that. I've been to Mobile, alabama and other places. But if you take a class in person with me, you get Casey and Kona, and if you take a class with me, interactive, on Zoom, it's the best Zoom ever. You actually have your own dog or cat in your room where the pet feels safe, and I guide you in real time how to do the different demos. So there's a Benny to both. And then, by the end of the first quarter of 2025, we're going to be offering an online self-paced course for Pet First Aid for you, so we reach even more people, wow.

Amy Castro: 36:18

So basically, there's no excuse whatsoever to not have this training. Yeah.

Arden Moore: 36:23

And I promise you you will have a good time, you will learn and you will feel that connection with your pet.

Amy Castro: 36:30

Yeah, definitely, and we'll put the links to access the information about the courses in the show notes. So people have that I know you told the story about. I mean like as if we're casually talking oh, I just saved my sister's dog. But are there any, for all your time in doing this, any success stories where somebody has come back and said this training, you know this information saved my pet's life? I'm sure you've got a bunch If you go on petfirstaidforyoucom, you'll see some testimonials.

Arden Moore: 36:57

One of my favorites is a friend. A lady took a class and she had a medium-sized mutt named Mr Finnegan Isn't that a great name? It's a great name. Yeah, mr Finnegan was in her back seat with the window down. She had him in a harness and she thought the harness was secured with that seatbelt strap, you know, connected to the seatbelt thing. No, he flew out of the window, oh my God, tumbled in the median. She turned around and when she got to him he was spurting blood and she said, as I was rendering aid to him, I said in my head Arden said, I have permission to freak out.

Arden Moore: 37:38

Later in my classes I show you how to stop an arterial bleed without doing a tourniquet. So she was doing what I taught her. She flagged down a guy who was driving a brand new truck. Must be a dog lover must be. She's all bloody, mr Finnegan's all bloody. They get in the cab of his truck and that nice man took him to the nearest vet clinic and Mr Finnegan lived. Wow, that's awesome. So the point is yes, guys, we need to take these classes and I'm going to be in your head, and if I'm in your head. I know you're going to do the right thing and you're going to help your dog or your cat.

Amy Castro: 38:17

That's awesome. That's awesome. Have I missed anything that you want to cover?

Arden Moore: 38:22

Well, I hope people would subscribe to my YouTube channel. It's Arden Moore, I think it's Arden Moore 342 or something, but there's no politics, there's no religion, there's no snarking. We have over 800 videos. I've got over a million views and there's a lot of fun things there. There's some things about Pet First Aid and I hope they would check out my shows O Behave on Pet Life Radio and Four-Legged Life, which is a nationally syndicated radio show that then goes to YouTube, and my fourleggedlifecom site Cool.

Amy Castro: 38:56

And what's the difference? Just so people know, Because I feel like in listening to the two shows it's a completely different kind of focus. I am, and that's a good thing.

Arden Moore: 39:07

Well, OVA is the longest running podcast on the planet. We've been on the air since 07.

Amy Castro: 39:12

But it is strictly a podcast.

Arden Moore: 39:13

There is no video. The Four-Legged Life show I have a different producer and that one does go on radio shows, so you know you get the weather and all that inputted from whatever. And then we do make it into a YouTube 15, 20 minute production video and then it goes on Four Legged Life, the website, and we do put some stuff on TikTok and Instagram so it gets diced and sliced, so we get the messages out.

Amy Castro: 39:39

Great yeah, cause people like those little snippets of info and having it. And it's amazing with some of the things that you have mentioned just today.

Arden Moore: 39:47

little bits of information, but they're memorable, they're going to stick with you and they're going to save a life, yeah all those years as a daily newspaper reporter, I'll be known for the hand that pumps is closest to the rump, oh well.

Amy Castro: 39:59

Yeah, some journalism professors rolling over in his grave at this point, but it's okay.

Arden Moore: 40:04

The medium is the message.

Amy Castro: 40:07

Oh gosh, well, Arden, thank you so much for being here and sharing this information, and I can't wait to share the links and so that people can get access to your many, many resources and not only sharing your knowledge, but your dedication and caring for pets and pet parents. All of your accomplishments are definitely a testament to how much you care, and that means a whole lot, so I really appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me on your show, amy, all right and everybody. Thank you again for listening to another episode of Muddy Paws and Hairballs. We will see you next week.

Amy Castro: 40:36

Thanks for listening to Muddy Paws and Hairballs. Be sure to visit our website at muddypawsandhairballscom for more resources and be sure to follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app so you'll never miss a show. And hey, if you like this show, text someone right now and say I've got a podcast recommendation. You need to check the show out and tell them to listen and let you know what they think. Don't forget to tune in next week and every week for a brand new episode. And if you don't do anything else this week, give your pets a big hug from us.